Allan Armstrong puts the case for building a Scottish-wide Left contingent on the ‘All Under One Banner’ march in Edinburgh on October 6th

EDINBURGH OCTOBER 6th – A RALLYING CALL FOR THE LEFT

35,000 in Glasgow, 10,000 in Inverness, 13,000 in Dumfries and 16,000 in Dundee – ‘All Under One Banner ‘ clearly represents something significant in Scottish politics. However it requires an examination of a wider politics going back to 2014 to appreciate the nature of this phenomenon.

In this article Paul Demarty argued that Donald Trump is following a logical policy which meets the requirements of a declining US capitalism, and its growing economic weakness, highlighted in the aftermath of the 2008 Crisis.

EUROPE AND THE TRUMP DOCTRINE

If Donald Trump is such a disastrous president, why is America not suffering?

Readers cannot, of course, have missed the drama. Having spent most of his European tour insulting his hosts and briefing against them in the media, the time came for the president to visit his Russian counterpart. Trump, as is his wont, has blown hot and cold in his relations with the Kremlin, but likes to be seen as having successful meetings with foreign leaders, and so – after hours alone with only an interpreter each – the two presidents came out to announce unspecified breakthroughs in Russo-American relations. Continue reading “EUROPE AND THE TRUMP DOCTRINE”

The issue should never be in what direction the Scottish national independence movement should go but what is the best way a new Scotland can be created. It is from this approach that the future political movements can be built. Organisations and movements can limp from political crisis to another if they fail to critically examine their initial purposes. Self-censorship in order to obtain a Yes vote may produce an outcome that could be very undesirable. Continue reading “WHAT NOW FOR THE INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT?”

We are posting two items on the situation in Catalunya. The first is from Eric Chester who recently visited Barcelona. The second is the motion put forward to the SSP’s National Council in May by the Dundee branch.

1. REPORT FROM BARCELONA

Popular Unity Candidacy, Catalunya

Barcelona has once again become a center of radical politics. After decades of brutal repression under Franco, the Left has returned and the city is alive with political activity. Of course, the Left of 2018 is not the same Left that controlled Barcelona during the first months of the Spanish Civil War. Continue reading “THE STRUGGLE FOR A CATALAN REPUBLIC”

If ever the Kurdish saying “No friends but the mountains” applied it is in the situation the People’s Defence Force/Womens’s Defence Force now confront in Afrin on the Turkish Syrian border. In the Byzantine politics for which this region is infamous, for a brief period the interests of the US government and the Kurds in northern Syria coincided. The US, having created the Islamic fundamentalist forces which have ravaged this region, faced blowback, after ISIS took over large areas of Iraq and Syria. The most effective forces confronting ISIS in the region are the Kurdish Left YPG/YPJ, so they received some short-term cynical and limited backing from the US State Department. With ISIS in retreat, it is back to supporting other Islamic fundamentalist forces, particularly the al-Qaeda linked Al-Nusra Front, and trying to win Turkey back from the Russian Federation to the US side. This article, written by Martin Suchanek, first appeared in Neue Internationale no. 226, and addresses the complex situation in Afrin.

Turkish airforce and artillery strike at Kurdish YPG/YPJ held town of Afrin

HANDS OFF ADRIN! SOLIDARITY WITH THE KURDS

“Operation Olive Branch”, the Turkish incursion into the Kurdish held territory of Afrin, has been running since January 20th. Last weekend alone, the Turkish army flew over a hundred bombing missions. Already days before, heavy artillery had fired at the positions of the Kurdish self-defence forces YPG/YPJ (People’s Defence Force / Women’s Defence Units). Since Sunday, 21 January, tanks and infantry, often deployed by puppet troops of the Turkish-led FSA (Free Syrian Army), including numerous Islamist ultra-reactionaries, have penetrated into the Kurdish territory around Afrin. Continue reading “HANDS OFF AFRIN! SOLIDARITY WITH THE KURDS”

Since the Brexit vote, the Tories, under Theresa May’s leadership, have been moving away from the recently shared politics of the majority of the British ruling class and mainstream British political parties. A central feature of these politics was based upon the globalised neo-liberal economics pushed by Margaret Thatcher, in the interests of a turbo-charged City of London. The City had really taken off after Nigel Lawson’s ‘Big Bang’ deregulation in 1983. Following New Labour’s 1996 election victory, they adopted the same unquestioning pro-City path. This was shown when Chancellor Gordon Brown abolished the few remaining government controls over the City’s operations. Under Tony Blair, Butskellism gave way to Blatcherism.Continue reading “WHICH WAY NOW – ‘BREXIT’ OR ‘EX-BRIT’?”

The Scottish Independence Convention (SIC) is to be relaunched in Glasgow on Sunday, September 18th. This body was first constituted on November 30th, 2005, on the initiative of the Scottish Socialist Party. The SNP gave its support, but then ensured that it was kept firmly at arm’s length whilst the party developed its own links with big business, and further accommodated to US and British imperial interests.

When the SNP leadership eventually launched its own front campaign, ‘Yes Scotland’, in Edinburgh on 25th May 2012, the SIC took no part in this decision. For the SNP, the main purpose of SIC had been to tie up the Left and to prevent a republican alternative from emerging – although the split that had occurred in the SSP certainly helped them in this endeavour.

Below we are republishing a pamphlet published in 2006 in response to the first SIC. This was produced by the RCN Platform in the SSP. The article anticipates some of the retreats the SNP went on to make to gain respectability, e.g. the climbdown over NATO.

Although today’s political situation is not the same as in 2005, there are still many things to be learned from this particular attempt to subordinate any independent class initiative to the political requirements of an SNP leadership, which represents the interests of a wannabe Scottish ruling class in the making.

Today we are holding the 4th RIC conference. RIC has been very much a contributor to Scotland’s ‘democratic revolution’, where 97% registered and 85% voted. Despite the ‘No’ result, politics in Scotland have been transformed. However, both the British unionists and the wannabe Scottish ruling class, who have latched on to the SNP, are trying hard to derail this ‘democratic revolution’.Continue reading “RCN BULLETIN FOR THE 4th RADICAL INDEPENDENCE CAMPAIGN CONFERENCE”

Ukraine is an international issue that has caused more confusion than most on the Left. In this article, first posted on Europe Solidarie sans Frontieres (see http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article35480), Jean Batou explains the role of Putin’s Russia and the historical background to revolutionary socialists’ understanding of Russia’s imperial domination of Ukraine.

PAST AND PRESENT IMPERIALISMS: PUTIN, THE WAR IN UKRAINE, AND THE FAR RIGHT

Putin’s Russia is an imperialist state dominated by a capitalist oligarchy that controls the state and that has developed a bellicose attitude toward its neighbors, whom the oligarchy reproaches for having taken advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union in order to escape its century-long tutelage. Embracing an ultra-nationalist ideology that gives a good deal of space to racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia, its authoritarian neoconservatism has become a veritable standard for the European extreme right. For those of us dedicated to fighting Western imperialism, be it American or European, an understanding of the Russian state’s imperial nature, of its expansionist tendencies, and of the real nature of its contest with the West is essential. Continue reading “PAST AND PRESENT IMPERIALISMS: PUTIN, THE WAR IN UKRAINE AND THE FAR RIGHT”

Eric Chester (RCN) gives his perspective on Scotland after the Westminster election.

Nicola – heading for independence or John Lewis?

The Scottish National Party has become the dominant force in Scottish politics. Already a majority in the Scottish parliament, SNP candidates crushed the Labour Party in the recent elections to Westminster. Yet SNP dominance extends well beyond the electoral arena. Within the trade unions and in the social movements, the SNP has become a major factor determining the policies followed by activists in those arenas.Continue reading “SCOTLAND AFTER THE WESTMINSTER ELECTION”